Motions
by Ishmael
Summary: They've lost him, and she never told him. J/D. R-rated for violent analogies; please don't read if you're uncomfortable with angst.


**Rating**: R for violent analogies

**Category**: J/D. ***Serious angst***

**Disclaimers**: they certainly don't belong to me, and in light of what I've just written it's just as well.

**Author's Notes**: I couldn't cry as I wrote this. Please don't read if you're uncomfortable with angst.

**Motions**  
by Jen

Motionless, speechless, they sat still in the pews of the small synagogue, overcome by a grief too recent to accept. The family, across from them, had tears flowing down their faces, but they merely sat in shock. To have one - to have another - taken from them in such a terrible way was just too sore to accept. 

They were conscious of whispers and stares from the other groups in the synagogue. Huddled at the front on one side, they were a small black mass in a sea of others. Extended family, friends from outside, college buddies - in most cases, mainly there just to see the President - all chatted and talked, excluded from the grief that overtook the first few benches on both sides, both families of this man.

The President had declined to speak at the ceremony - not because he did not want to, but because he knew he would not be able to summon the words. He had lost a friend, a friend who had brought others to him; a friend who had, above all else, understood his principles and ideals and helped give those to the country. A friend, who, over the years, had become his son, even as Leo was his brother. He, his wife and daughters, in the front pew, were close together in the grief. 

She sat, behind the President, unable to let the tears fall and wishing they would, because then it would be easier and the hurt would lessen. When they'd told her, she hadn't believed them, but slowly, painfully, they'd convinced her, and within her there had grown a sharp, cutting ice which ached constantly. She hadn't known that grief could take a physical manifestation, and yet she'd known all along that when she lost him it would be like this: sore, empty, heartbreaking. She'd gone and gotten completely, uncharacteristically drunk the night after it happened, but instead of being forgotten, her grief had been magnified until it crushed her spirit and overtook her soul.

Sam put his arm around her, but she could not lean in. She was unable to take comfort from him or even give it in return. Sam had lost a great friend; she had lost her heart.

It seemed as though she could never be warm again: the cold world without him was too real, too painful to bear. The ice in her chest would never lessen; her eyes would never sparkle; her step would never bounce as it once had. She was a widow who had never married, a widow who had never even slept with the man who had left her behind. She was young, so young that people would expect her to put this behind her and love again, when she knew she never could.

The memories tore holes in her heart: the smiles, the friendly flirting with more beneath, the warm, happy side of him that he revealed to so few, the touches and the few, stolen kisses on his last days. And yet to her, it was everything - all she had left of something that had been there for so long that she couldn't even begin to comprehend living without it. 

The rabbi got up to speak, and immediately she felt sick. She got up and ran out of the synagogue amidst many whispers and even the unfeeling, morbid flash of a camera, belonging to a photographer hovering outside the door, barely making it before the little food Abbey Bartlet had managed to force into her that morning made a reappearance. 

Abbey had followed her, and the appearance of the First Lady somehow made the photographers disperse. She didn't get to see the look on Abbey's face, but she knew it would kill.

She retched again at her own thoughts, the word that burned in her brain, stifling everything else. Abbey now was massaging her back, murmuring comforting words, trying to give her strength. But there was nowhere for the strength to go. It had all gone, leaving a void that would never hold it again.

With all her heart she wanted to scream and cry and yell. At the agents behind him; at the people who could have stopped him on the way out the White House; at Congress, for rejecting their environmental legislation and making the protestors angry; at the environmental fund for holding the summit; at the President for making him do it; at herself for not stopping him or even going with him; at God for letting him die. At the one who put the bomb there.

At him, for going out there at all.

At the media, who ran the footage - after the watershed, as if in some unreal way this would make it any better - of the bomb going off, and the blood flying everywhere. 

His blood. 

She knew, of course, that it could have been anyone's blood - any of the 52 killed, or the fifteen injured. But in the twisted way that a brain punishes itself, every time she saw the blood, she thought of it as his. They told her not to watch, but she was addicted to it. To watching him die, in the hope that then it would be final, and over. But it never ended.

The pain would always be there, the agony of never having loved him the way they were meant to. When she had seen the bulletin, it was Rosslyn all over again, and she had hoped for the same outcome. She had run red lights again, as she had promised, rushing to tell him as she had meant to before, rushing to keep him alive, but when she arrived, they told her he was already dead. She couldn't help feeling that somehow, if she'd told him before, if she'd arrived sooner, he would have survived. She had made it at Rosslyn. 

If she'd told him then, he might have lived. 

She'd meant to, but she'd excused herself - first by saying he was still recovering. Then as he grew better, she told herself she would do it every morning. But every time she tried to tell him, the words would not come.

If she'd tried a little harder, he might have lived.

If she'd stuck with him, she could have placed herself in front of him. Protected him from it. She could have covered him. If she'd been there at Rosslyn, maybe he wouldn't have died so easily now.

It was Rosslyn all over again, only now she couldn't forget. The surgery after the shooting had been terrible, but it had stopped eventually, forgotten in the recovery. But he would never recover, and she would never forget. The what ifs would still be screaming in her head, years from now. She would never have solace, never be able to take a break. Always, the guilt would be there. 

She collapsed on the ground as her knees buckled beneath her. Black swam in front of her eyes. 

Abbey sat behind her, rubbing her back. "He knew," the First Lady said softly. "And he loved you."

And that was the last thing she heard before she was swallowed by the merciful oblivion and knew no more.


End file.
